The first thing Kurt noticed about this new form Ruth had adopted, was that it was relatively slow. Make no mistake, she was still way faster than anything that size had any right to be, but the fact that Kurt even had time to think about while she was charging at him spoke volumes.

  If anything, her ratio of mass-speed had incremented--she was moving faster relative to her bulk. The problem was that her bulk had more than doubled, possibly even tripled, and that had obviously slowed her down quite a bit. Magic could twist physics, not ignore them.

  So, when her form was finally upon him, her six horns pointing at his chest with the intent to impale him, he had more than enough time to simply jump aside, let her run over the spot he had occupied and, sword in hand, jump right back to his initial position.

  He hit her side feet first and, using his free hand to grab onto one of the roots or vines- The magic that ran through them had darkened and roughened them to the point they were hard to tell apart- that made her form, stabbed Silver Demon into her side, as deep as it would go.

  As it turns out, 'As deep as it would go' ended up being about five inches. Her flesh was too tough for even his maximun, Od boosted strength to do anything else. He heard the wyldfae scream in pain- Hey, at least he had that to hold onto- as her bull-like body crashed against the trees at the edge of the clearing. And right past them. Without any signs of stopping or even slowing down, his foe kept charging forward, blasting every tree on her path into little less than splinters.

  And deeper into the forest.

  The possibility of there being a point to this crossed Kurt's mind: Was she trying to drag him outside the area Mila was controlling? Would she turn back into her regular self any minute now and simply will the trees that now surrounded them to tear him apart?

  As the seconds passed by with none of his theories coming true, and with the wyldfae still charging into the forest without a care in the world, another question, one less harrowing, came to him: How lucid was she exactly?

  She had said that boosting herself absorbing spirits hurt, that it felt quite terrible, and that had been her 'half-assed boosting'. So, it stood to question: Just how much more painful than that was staying in this form? Enough to clouter her mind? Enough to make her go feral?

  "Hey bitch!" He yelled, his voice barely audible through the wind that was hitting his face. "Thanks for the ride, but my stop was ten trees ago!"

  He awaited for her response, expecting a tirade of death threats, or at least any amount of yelling back. He received none of those, the thumping of wooden hooves was the closest thing to a response to come from her.

  She really had devolved into a beast.

  Feeling a smile draw on his face and new plans bubbling on his brain, Kurt let go of the beast's hide, hopping onto the forest ground, and started sprinting back to the clearing. He heard the sound of something carving a trench trough the soil coming from behind, which was quicly followed by the sound of very heavy hoofsteps coming towards him.

  It seemed that Ruth had the presence of mind to at least remember that she wanted to kill him.

  While this new form of hers was undoubtedly slower than her previous one, slow enough for Kurt to easily avoid her charges, she was still faster than him when running in a straight line, a fact that was confirmed by the increasingly closer thumping.

  It was only thanks to the headstart he had that he reached the clearing before the wyldfae was onto him, and even then he had to roll aside almost as soon has he had reached it to avoid getting crushed.

  The ungulate beast passed right through the spot he had stood on not more than a second earlier.

  She had almost reached the opposite end of the clearing by the time she managed to stop herself. When she turned to face Kurt, she did it slowly, laboriously, in the way only a creature that size would do.

  Kurt thanked God for that clumsiness she was displaying, because it was his only weapon against her. Her body had toughened up to a point he wasn't even sure if fire sorcery would be effective. His sword sure as hell wasn't, at least not with his current Strength. The blade itself had no problem cutting into her, but he simply couldn't push it deep enough for it to matter.

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  Perhaps if he had more leverage, if he was standing with both of his feet on the ground, instead of dangling off the side of that monster. But, could he really pull it off? Could he really side step one of her charges while staying close enough for her sword to reach? She was slow enough that he could confidently avoid her strikes, but he wasn't at all sure if he could pull something like that off. It was one hell of a gamble.

  His gaze turned to Mila, who was still crouched on the same spot she had been since this fight started, her glowing hands still planted on the ground. This time though, Kurt couldn't read the exertion she was going through in her face, because she was now slumped forward with her forehead just as pressed against the grass as her hands were.

  She looked like she was about to pass out.

  Kurt turned his head back to the wyldfae, and readied the sword on his hand. Gamble it was. If this didn't work, and he wasn't mangled trying, he would still have that one card. The one that would most likely make this whole trip useless, which was also the one that had the most chances of putting Ruth down for the count.

  Why did everything have to be so fucking difficult?

  Ruth charged at him once again, and Kurt had to fight every instinct, both trained and inborn, to not just get as far away from the juggernaut the wyldfae had become. No, instead he darted towards her, longsword firmly clutched in both hands and poised for a point right below her middle-right horn. The one that was half as long as he was tall, and that could no doubt eviscerate him.

  Yeah, this really was a gamble.

  He barely managed to take half a step to the side before those horns reached him, but he did manage. The lower horn almost, but not quite, brushed against his waist, so much so that he felt the air it displaced through his clothes. The middle horn passed right above his shoulder, and the air displaced by it caused his right ear to start ringing. The top horn passed right above his head, close enough to ruffle his hair without touching a single strand of it.

  Kurt, however, wasn't paying attention to any of these very damn near brushes with death. He was to busy feeling his bones rattle and crack. His sword had managed to stab the point he was looking for and, just as he had predicted, he managed to stab it almost a foot into the beast's body. A foot-deep stabbing wound was, however, far from the worst damage this move managed to bring onto the wyldfae.

  An aspect of this plan Kurt hadn't considered, an understandable mistake given that he formulated the whole thing in less than thirty seconds, was the momentum the wyldfae's charges carried with them. Something that big, moving faster than Kurt could run? A simple stab wasn't stopping that.

  And so, with the beast still moving forward despite the attack, what should have been a stab a foot in depth and about a third of that in length turned into a gash that took pretty much the entire length of its body.

  Kurt didn't have time to celebrate this unexpected critical strike, however, because he was the one holding the sword that was carving that same gash into the wyldfae and so, he and his arms and his legs were the ones that had to go above and beyond their limits to keep Silver Demon where it was.

  The vibrations that were sent down the sword and onto his hands threatened with breaking his wrists, and the sheer push the fraction of the charge's power he was fighting against was enough to make him feel his arms and legs would snap like twigs the exact second he relaxed either his muscles or his Od flaring even a bit.

  Another thing he was thankful for was the mithril that made his sword, because there was no way any mundane blade could have resisted that strain without snapping in half.

  Once the sword had done all the damage it could to the wyldfae, and the contact between the two ceased, a feeling of wobbliness unlike anything he had felt in his young life overtook him, It felt as if someone had taken the bones on his legs and arms and replaced them with Jell-O. It was only by stabbing his sword on the ground and leaning most of his upper body on it that he managed to avoid falling flat on his face.

  Absentmindedly, his eyes went to the bars that had been occupying the corner of his vision since he had turned 15, and what he found there, though not surprising, wasn't exactly uplifting either: His AP still sat at about 40% of its capacity, same as before. His Stamina was now down at a 36.3%, which was pretty accurate with how his body was feeling.

  On the subject of how beaten up he felt, his HP. He hadn't really paid much mind to that particular bar since he had gotten this power for a number of reasons: First, he found that representing the body's well being through something as simple as a simple percent attached to a red bar was too much of an abstraction, too unreliable. Second, he was experienced enough in terms of fighting and being harmed to accurately gauge just how wounded he was through pain alone. And third, he hadn't really gotten seriously injured since he got his power-Even Conrad knocking him out in their spar had only left him with a bruise on his chin, one that had already healed-, and so, he never had much reason to check it like he did with his SP.

  But now he had, and we he did, he found it at a meager half of its capacity. What did that even mean, that if he tried to meet the wyldfae's charge once more he'd die? Again, too abstract for what it represented. But, along with the numbness and pain that were now overtaking him, it hammered the point home. He had to end this fight ASAP, or his body would give out on him.

  His pondering was interrupted by a scream that came from somewhere behind him. When he managed to turn around, with great effort he may add, he saw that his enemy hadn't been unbothered by their clash: The gash that he had carved on the wyldfae's side was now bleeding torrents of golden sap, but that wasn't everything that came out of the wound. Fumes of glittering green magic, the nature spirits she had absorbed into her body, were blasting off the wound like steam off a kettle. With every passing second that energy abandoned her body, Kurt saw her form deflate and shrink, roots and vines dislodging and falling to the ground, and the coloration on the remaining ones becoming clearer.

  For a brief moment, and despite the pain, he allowed himself to rejoice. At least his pain had been worth something.

  But as previously said, this moment was a brief one, because the implications of her weakening body would reach Kurt soon after, alongside Ruth's second barrage of screams.

  "GODDAM YOUUU!!!" She shrieked, her voice barely coherent. Coherent being the operative word. "I'M GONNA SKEWER YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

  Kurt wanted to kick himself for his foolishness. Of course she was regaining her mind. After all, it had been the mental straing of sealing those spirits in her body that had caused her mind to devolve into an animalistic state. It was just natural that, now that most of those spirits were leaving her, her faculties would come back.

  Ruth wasn't much of a combatant, mentality wise. She was hotheaded, had no pain resistance, and she had a penchant for abandoning her strategies in favor of new ones as soon as they failed, not caring to reason if those new strategies would fare any better. But she was also deceptively smart and, above everything else, perceptive and pragmatic. As soon as she realized that Mila was on her last legs, she would try to control the spirits around her again, as she had at the start of the battle. And Kurt still had nothing that could counter that.

  He needed to finish her off now, and he only had one tactic that could accomplish that.

  Conjuring his wand on one hand, Kurt began dragging his feet towards his foe.